Fay­ola K J Fras­er

“Let’s go out there and res­cue some peo­ple.” Lu­cia Cabr­era-Jones, the co-founder of Women Owned Me­dia and Ed­u­ca­tion Net­work (W.O.M.E.N), pas­sion­ate­ly de­scribes the gen­e­sis of her NGO and the ethos at the core of their work.

W.O.M.E.N is an NGO in T&T, es­tab­lished in May 2022, em­pow­er­ing women and girls through ed­u­ca­tion, skills de­vel­op­ment and ad­vo­ca­cy. Along with her co-founder, Jayme Hoyte, Cabr­era-Jones de­cid­ed to cre­ate not on­ly an NGO sup­port­ing women but a “hub that in­cor­po­rates Span­ish-speak­ing women from the mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty,” fos­ter­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial pur­suits and de­vel­op­ing busi­ness skills through ini­tia­tives such as ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing work­shops and pop-up shops.

Cabr­era-Jones was born and raised in Cu­ba, and at­tained her Mas­ters in Chem­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing, but is now fo­cused on Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). “I de­cid­ed that I had reached the cap in my ca­reer in Cu­ba,” she said, “and I mi­grat­ed to Grena­da and got mar­ried.” Dur­ing the mar­riage, she suf­fered do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and abuse and was fran­ti­cal­ly seek­ing op­tions to “get out” of the mar­riage.

She was ul­ti­mate­ly of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty via CSME, to come to Trinidad and work at the UWI. “I came to Trinidad with two suit­cas­es and noth­ing else, ready to start again from scratch,” she re­mem­bers, “and this pe­ri­od was the be­gin­ning of my tes­ti­mo­ny.”

Cabr­era-Jones’ rec­ol­lec­tion of that dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, marred by abuse, suf­fer­ing and empti­ness is framed as a tes­ti­mo­ny that led to her true pur­pose, and she be­lieves she had to go through that to be able to help and res­cue women to­day.

As a for­mer vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, her mot­to is that she is “proud­ly di­vorced and hap­pi­ly alive.” Af­ter be­ing threat­ened with death for two years by her ex-hus­band, Cabr­era-Jones worked hard to cast off her own cul­ture’s taboo sur­round­ing sep­a­ra­tion and di­vorce, fled Grena­da and left her mar­riage. She has been liv­ing and work­ing in Trinidad since 2005, and is con­sis­tent­ly seek­ing ways to use her neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences to help oth­ers. Dur­ing the lock­down pe­ri­od due to COVID in 2020, as re­ports of in­creas­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­faced due to many fam­i­lies be­ing home­bound, she knew that it was her op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vo­cate on be­half of these vic­tims.

“Many women don’t leave be­cause of fi­nan­cial con­straints,” she said, “and men make them feel as though they can’t (fi­nan­cial­ly) sur­vive with­out them.” This meant that busi­ness and skills de­vel­op­ment be­came the core of her NGO’s man­date. In 2022, her NGO was launched, and along­side the British High Com­mis­sion, Port-of-Spain, W.O.M.E.N host­ed the “Thrive Pro­gramme”. This was a six-week, free pro­gramme with sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts of­fer­ing ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing work­shops cov­er­ing three mod­ules–busi­ness ideas and val­i­da­tion, brand­ing and mar­ket­ing and fi­nance and pitch­ing. Al­though many ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing pro­grammes tend to stop at the the­o­ret­i­cal el­e­ment, THRIVE in­cor­po­rat­ed a prac­ti­cal el­e­ment, and of­fered grad­u­ates a spot in their Pop-Up Mar­ket, al­low­ing them to earn mon­ey by sell­ing their prod­ucts. Out of the 50 par­tic­i­pants, 41 grad­u­at­ed and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Pop Up Mar­ket. The NGO sub­se­quent­ly had oth­er pro­grammes, name­ly “Face and Fix The Is­sues”, and cam­paigns ad­vo­cat­ing against gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“The high­light of the past year of W.O.M.E.N.’s work has been to par­take of the space and achieve to­geth­er in col­lab­o­ra­tion and to­geth­er­ness–mi­grants and lo­cals alike.” Cabr­era-Jones, a mi­grant her­self, has put in­clu­sion at the fore­front of the NGO’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

She said that get­ting to know many mi­grants dur­ing her role in the UWI and men­tor­ing them to as­sist them in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing Trinida­di­an cul­ture has giv­en her in­sight in­to the com­mu­ni­ty’s needs. In­clu­sion is a core tenet of W.O.M.E.N’s work, and that is mir­rored in the of­fer­ing of si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tion (Eng­lish-Span­ish) dur­ing the work­shops, to al­low Span­ish-speak­ing mi­grants to ful­ly par­tic­i­pate. She de­scribes the way that the Pop-Up Mar­ket cre­at­ed a “seam­less con­nec­tion be­tween the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty of en­tre­pre­neurs, break­ing the is­sue of seg­re­ga­tion.”

Cabr­era-Jones en­cour­ages mi­grant women to re­mem­ber their pur­pose and hold on­to the dri­ve and mo­tive that got them to T&T in the first place. Fur­ther­more, she calls on the lo­cal Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion to in­cor­po­rate mi­grants in­to work­places and schools, and not view them as a mono­lith, say­ing, “There is a Span­ish-speak­ing com­mu­ni­ty who is just like you, we come as teach­ers, as pro­fes­sion­als, and moth­ers.”

Cabr­era-Jones’s mes­sage to young women is to “be your­self, and leave your au­then­tic foot­print wher­ev­er you go.” She in­tends to use W.O.M.E.N to ral­ly women to­geth­er and pool our re­sources to­ward sup­port­ing one an­oth­er. She cred­its God with guid­ing her to use her dif­fi­cult life jour­ney to in­spire oth­er women, and be­lieves that “all the pain I went through was not in vain if at least one per­son’s faith can be in­creased with my tes­ti­mo­ny.”

Cabr­era-Jones is a woman of faith and pas­sion and will con­tin­ue to change lives through her work with W.O.M.E.N.